by SETH BOREN­STEIN AND ANIRUD­DHA GHOS­AL, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GLAS­GOW, Scot­land (AP) — Large rifts re­main as Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate talks tick down to a Fri­day dead­line. A lot of the di­vide comes down to mon­ey, which na­tions have it and which do not. So, it’s time for the diplo­mat­ic cav­al­ry to ride in.

De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress mem­bers al­so joined the two-week cli­mate con­fer­ence in Glas­gow on the side­lines Tues­day to re­in­force the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ef­forts to in­crease cli­mate ac­tion.

The start of the con­fer­ence saw heads of gov­ern­ment talk­ing about how curb­ing glob­al warm­ing is a fight for sur­vival. The lead­ers fo­cused on big pic­tures, not the in­tri­cate word­ing cru­cial to ne­go­ti­a­tions. Then, for about a week, the tech­no­crat­ic ne­go­ti­a­tions fo­cused on those key de­tails, get­ting some things done but not re­solv­ing the re­al­ly sticky sit­u­a­tions.

Now, it’s time for the “high lev­el” ne­go­ti­a­tions, when gov­ern­ment min­is­ters or oth­er se­nior diplo­mats swoop in to make the po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions that are sup­posed to break the tech­ni­cal log­jams. The Unit­ed Na­tions has three goals out of Glas­gow, which so far are all out of reach: cut­ting car­bon diox­ide emis­sions in half by 2030; rich na­tions giv­ing poor coun­tries $100 bil­lion a year for com­bat­ing cli­mate change; and en­sur­ing that half of that mon­ey goes to adapt­ing to cli­mate change’s in­creas­ing harms.

To forge com­pro­mise, they have a big gap to bridge. Or more ac­cu­rate­ly, mul­ti­ple gaps: there’s a trust gap and a wealth gap. A north-south gap. It’s about mon­ey, his­to­ry and the fu­ture.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, front, and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, second left, and other US politicians prepare for a group photo after arriving at the venue of the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow has entered it's second week as leaders from around the world, are gathering in Scotland's biggest city, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

On one side of the gap are na­tions that de­vel­oped and be­came rich from the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion fu­elled by coal, oil and gas that start­ed in the U.K. On the oth­er side are the na­tions that haven’t de­vel­oped yet and haven’t got­ten rich and are now be­ing told those fu­els are too dan­ger­ous for the plan­et.

The key fi­nan­cial is­sue is the $100 bil­lion a year pledge first made in 2009. The de­vel­oped na­tions still haven’t reached the $100 bil­lion a year mark. This year the rich na­tions in­creased their aid to $80 bil­lion a year, still short of what’s promised.

As the head of the con­fer­ence briefed coun­tries Mon­day on the progress - and the lack of it, in some ways - in the talks, de­vel­op­ing coun­try af­ter de­vel­op­ing coun­try re­spond­ed by not­ing how un­ful­filled rich na­tions’ fi­nan­cial pledges were.

“Every­body here is livid,” said Saleemul Huq, a cli­mate sci­ence and pol­i­cy ex­pert who is di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Cli­mate Change and De­vel­op­ment in Bangladesh

It’s not as if that $100 bil­lion alone would make a big dif­fer­ence be­cause tril­lions of dol­lars world­wide in pay­ments, not pledges, would be need­ed to com­bat cli­mate change, not $100 bil­lion, Huq said. Pro­vid­ing the mon­ey is im­por­tant to bridge the gap in trust be­tween rich na­tions and poor na­tions, he ar­gued.

“They re­neged on their promise. They failed to de­liv­er it,” Huq said. “And they seem not to care about it. And, so why should we trust any­thing they say any­more?”

While the crowd at the con­fer­ence Mon­day cheered on for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma when he urged na­tions to do more and rich na­tions to help poor, young Ugan­dan cli­mate ac­tivist Vanes­sa Nakate tweet­ed: “I was 13 when you promised $100B #Cli­mate­Fi­nance. The US has bro­ken that promise, it will cost lives in Africa. Earth’s rich­est coun­try does not con­tribute enough to life-sav­ing funds. You want to meet #COP26 youth. We want ac­tion. Oba­ma & @PO­TUS #ShowUs­The­Money.”

Nakate told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press she wasn’t crit­i­ciz­ing Oba­ma, who tar­get­ed young cli­mate ac­tivists with his mes­sage, but “speak­ing the truth...  The mon­ey was promised but hasn’t been de­liv­ered.”

Huq said that rich, pol­lut­ing na­tions al­so had failed the rest of the world by not de­liv­er­ing on emis­sion tar­gets that would lim­it glob­al warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius. As things stand, it’s the poor who pay for the de­struc­tion caused by cli­mate change, he said. Stud­ies have shown that poor­er na­tions, like Bangladesh, are hit hard­er by cli­mate change than rich na­tions, which al­so have more re­sources to adapt to ex­treme weath­er.

Bruce Kendall Goldtooth, environmental, climate, and economic justice activist, gestures as he speaks during a protest inside the venue of the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow has entered it's second week as leaders from around the world, are gathering in Scotland's biggest city, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

There have long been trust is­sues in the an­nu­al U.N. cli­mate talks, said Niklas Hohne, a cli­mate sci­en­tist at the New Cli­mate In­sti­tute in Ger­many who has at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence for more than 20 years and tracks pledges and ac­tions to trans­late how much they mean for curb­ing pro­ject­ed warm­ing.

Hohne said poor coun­tries have good rea­sons to be wary, but na­tions are gath­er­ing “at this con­fer­ence to build that trust. And the trust can on­ly be built by show­ing re­al ac­tion.”

While Chi­na is now the No. 1 car­bon pol­luter and In­dia is No. 3, car­bon diox­ide stays in the air for cen­turies. Based on his­tor­i­cal emis­sions - the stuff still in the at­mos­phere trap­ping heat = the Unit­ed States and Eu­ro­pean na­tions are most re­spon­si­ble for cli­mate change, Hohne said.

Hohne said it is nor­mal for high-lev­el min­is­ters to ride to the res­cue in the sec­ond week of cli­mate talks.

“There are cer­tain is­sues which go to the min­is­ters and those are the tricky bits and on­ly the min­is­ters can solve them. And once they solve them, they go to the tech­ni­cal lev­el again for the im­ple­men­ta­tion,” Hohne said. “I think we have the nor­mal amount of tricky bits right now.”

U.S. Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez brought her cli­mate-celebri­ty star pow­er to the U.N. cli­mate talks on Tues­day as part of a con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion led by House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi. Oca­sio-Cortez told re­porters her chief hope is to see the Unit­ed States es­tab­lish it­self as a world leader in cut­ting cli­mate-dam­ag­ing fos­sil fu­el pol­lu­tion.

Asked if she had a mes­sage to young ac­tivists who have in­stru­men­tal in press­ing gov­ern­ments to cut cli­mate-dam­ag­ing fos­sil fu­el pol­lu­tion, Oca­sio-Cortez told re­porters in­side the con­fer­ence site: “Well, I would say, ‘Stay in the streets. Keep push­ing.’” —(AP)

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Ellen Knick­mey­er con­tributed to this re­port from Glas­gow.